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Edgar Allen Poe

The Bells and The Raven

In the late forties or early fifties my father thought of illustrating Poe's The Raven and The Bells. The project never worked out and the book was never published. Of the twenty five illustrations which would have been included I have ten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The glass

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Woman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bells

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Raven

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bones

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woman and raven

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fright

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mushroom

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Raven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

&

 

 

 

 

My father invented his own "engraving" process. Instead of applying an engraver's needle directly to the zinc plates he prepared cellophane sheets with a special solution he could draw on directly. In this manner he could create his engravings as if he were drawing on ordinary paper and employing a mixture of light and acid applied the sheets to the plates, leaving the finished impressions.

The proofs for most of the illustrations above have disappeared. And I used the original cellophanes to make these reproductions. The two reproductions which were not taken from the cellophane sheets can be detected because they appear more evenly dark brown than the others: they are of the raven in the window and the illustration of an open book in a man's hands.

Like photographic negatives, the blacks and whites on the cellophanes are reversed.

 

 

Original Glass

 

 

He also employed this technique for many of his illustrations for the Gulliver and the Cervantes. The secret of how he accomplished this process appears to have gone with him to the grave.

 

Other illustrations for unpublished books

American Printmakers On-line Catalogue Raisonne Project: The Prints of Luis Quintanilla 

 

 

 

 

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